


show me that you're human (you won't break)

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Sex, Canon Disabled Character, Coulson gets to have some manpain, Crying During Sex, Cunnilingus, Daisy has to do the emotional support this time, Disability, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Future Fic, Morning After, POV Phil Coulson, Phil Coulson is wonderfully clingy, Romance, Tears, also Daisy has some self-esteem issues, also his dick gets sad, like seriously Coulson has a lot of manpain and emotions here, mentions of Coulson/Rosalind, then GREAT sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 09:32:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5285633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the first time something like this happens to Coulson. He doesn't know what's wrong with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	show me that you're human (you won't break)

_It would have been easier if she was just evil, just another traitor._

_You wouldn't have to believe her then._

_Her words would have no weight on your conscience if she were just saying them to hurt you. If everything she did was to hurt you._

_If she was not the monster you made her to be but just a regular awful human being – like you._

_Because if she didn't have your ulterior motives then who took advantage of whom. If she didn't have ulterior motives you are the cold one, the unfeeling one. If there was no real reason for your distrust then you have thrown all that away for nothing. And it wasn't much, but you're in no position to throw anything away._

_And if she's not the bad guy then **you are**._

_If she's not heartless then you are heartless._

 

+

 

Daisy is dying in his arms.

Again.

The repetition almost feels like carelessness on his part.

This shouldn't have happened.

"Hang on," he whispers, and not because he's mindful of an audience which includes friends and traitors and ex-lovers; he whispers wondering how many times he'll have to do this before it's too late. The dryness in his throat hurts, the ordeal of being thrown across the portal and pulled back again still disconcerting, like his body is not yet his own.

Daisy defeated Death but it comes at a cost. Probably saved the whole damn world. Saved him, for a starter. It had always been his greatest fear, someone using him against Daisy, someone taking advantage of – 

Of what, exactly? Their frienship? They are not exactly friendly now. When was the last time they spoke in amicable terms? The last time Daisy looked at him with something other than disappointment? That tie between them, the one Coulson always feared could be exploited just like this, had seemed weaker than ever. Yet – he doesn't think Daisy hesitated one second after he got tossed into the other side. 

"Daisy, Daisy..." he calls, lamenting every time he was unable to say her name as she wanted.

Coulson wipes the blood away from her lips, her nose. This is the cost of their connection, even at its most tenous. He touches her neck, leaving a handprint of red and regret. It would have been better for her if they had never met. It's not the first time he thinks this.

But Daisy is tough and tender. Of course she _refuses_ to die in his arms.

 

+

 

"I have emotions," Coulson hisses against her mouth.

"What? _What_?"

Daisy flattens her palm against his chest and pushes him away. He whimpers – chasing that warmth, he didn't think about how painful it would be to lose it even for one second. He's such a fool for breaking this with words. He groans against her lips and his skin aches.

"Rosalind," he says, and the name tastes weird as if it's been _years_ instead of a few weeks. "She told me I had no emotions and maybe I wasn't human."

Daisy's eyes widen. "That's awful," she says, in a low, throaty voice.

He shrugs. "To be fair I had just accused her of being Hydra and sleeping with me for intel."

Daisy cringes almost imperceptibly and now Coulson wonders if there was something more complex that a gut feeling about Price's alliances in Daisy's dislike of his relationship with the woman. The way they are both acting now – kissing in his office, tearing at each other's clothes like in a bad softcore, only the synth music is missing – makes Coulson rethink a lot of things he had believed were clear between him and Daisy.

She runs her hands down his chest. Coulson breathes heavily, struggling to keep still with her legs wrapped around his waist and his hard-on pressing against her body. He doesn't want to talk, but he's the one who started it.

"I'm thinking maybe she was right," he says, feeling the self-pity kick with a bitter taste in his throat. He knows Daisy, he knows what this kind of words do to her, he regrets speaking immediately, wants to take them back. He goes on. "I don't feel very human." 

He smiles at her, pleading silently.

"Coulson," she calls. "I'm not going to pretend that... Okay. It's true you're not great at _communicating_ emotions. But that doesn't mean–"

She looks into his eyes and stops. She knows she's not getting through. Coulson looks away. Her fingers curl around the collar of his shirt. He wishes those words hadn't gotten to him like they did, so he wouldn't have to push them onto Daisy when they only thing he wants to give her is love. He didn't want chunks of this part of himself slipping through. Worries it's the only part that's real.

If _she_ was right, and he just makes others hurt like he does.

He didn't mean to do that to Rosalind but he absolutely _can't_ do it to Daisy.

"When I met you that's the first thing I noticed about you," she tells him quietly, sweet. "You were warm and human and... your heart."

It sounds like a joke if he thinks too much about it. Except Daisy would never joke about something like that. Is that really what she thought about him when they met? Daisy wouldn't lie, not even to make him feel better, specially wouldn't lie to make him feel better.

"All this time, Coulson," she says, her voice more resolute now. " _Phil_. Even at your worst, I never thought you were heartless."

And maybe he does have a heart after all, because he can feel it in his throat and pushing at the edges of him, threatening to rip the seams. But is it really fair of him, doing this? He needs her, perhaps more than he wants to have her like this. He needs her – he knew that before their fallout, before his brief stint on an alien planet, before she almost died to get him back. Their connection is risky enough even as a tenous friendship. Who knows how much worse it could get after this? 

Yet she was the one who had wanted to kiss him, who had pushed him against the desk, who had wrapped her arms around him first. Daisy was the one who crossed the line, the first to admit she wanted this.

He touches his gloved hand across the inside of her arm, the still-visible bruises, the fragile flesh.

"You almost died."

"Yeah, I noticed. I was there." She cups his chin in her hand. "You told me to hang on," she says. He didn't think she would remember. She didn't, the first time she almost died in his arms.

"You saved me," Coulson says, like it's an accusation. "You knew what it would do to you, but you saved me anyway."

Daisy gives him a serious expression, her grip on his clothes tighter, tugging, pulling.

"I knew what it would do to me, if I had let you die," she says, _pulling_ , shoving their mouths together like she has an answer for everything.

 

+

 

"Well, I can say this is a first for me," Daisy tells him.

She smiles nervously, careful with his pain, and Coulson thinks no wonder it's the first time, of course it is. So weak, so foolish, he's no match for her. He pulls out of her, cock immediately soft and fucking useless and that's not even the worst part, turning his face away, but unable to leave her bed.

"Hey, hey," Daisy says, stretching like a cat and touching his nape, his back. Coulson winces and likes it, is unable not to.

He tries to wipe his tears quickly, effectively, so she wouldn't know how many there are, so the shame can be stopped and dried.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I don't know what's wrong with me."

Daisy stretches again, her body like liquid filling every gap, slipping under his chest until Coulson is on top of her, a neat trick that somehow has her in his arms again with him barely noticing. Their hips touch. Coulson swallows desire in case desire brought this on. He doesn't know what went wrong: he was happy, making love to someone he loved and trusted, someone who believed he had a heart and tried to prove it with her hands, her mouth. It was warm. Was it the intensity of Daisy's gaze on him? Maybe he was blind, maybe this was just a matter of lighting, of it stinging his eyes.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," he repeats, softer, appalled, ducking his head until he feels Daisy kissing the top of it. He feels like he wants to cry harder at her being nice about it. She shouldn't have to be nice about this.

"It's okay," she says, drawing her hand across his face, and noticing how he doesn't want her pity or understanding, so she offers something else. "No, really. It's, actually, uh, a nervous reaction. It doesn't have to have anything to do with this. Pretty common."

He lifts his head.

"You know a lot," Coulson comments in a hoarse voice, still struggling to wipe all the tears away, rushing to it. 

"I know a lot about a lot of stuff," she says. "Specially psychobabble."

Coulson raises an eyebrow.

"But that's a story for another night," Daisy tells him, kissing his neck. "That's for when you want to see _me_ cry during sex."

She laughs softly, like it's a joke. Coulson wraps his fingers around her nape and pulls her towards him, bringing their mouths together. He kisses her fiercely, thinking he can sooner bear his own sadness than hers, pushing his thumb into her palm, sliding his tongue against hers.

Her face is wet from his crying when he pulls back.

"It'll pass, don't worry," she says, brushing her thumb against the tears almost casually.

But he still has some dignity left. "This must be so off-putting for you."

Her body is so close and vibrant against his. Is this how Daisy feels the world around her all the time, in continuous motion? She scratches his ankle lightly with her toes. "I'm not that shallow," she tells him, a bit hurt. "Or do you think...?"

Coulson shakes his head.

"I miss my hand," he says, softly sighing in self-parody, it just got away from him. He's never said it in so many words, not even to himself.

"That's normal." Meaning, that's okay. Meaning you're allowed to. Coulson didn't think he was. So many people had lost more important things – Daisy lost two parents that day. He didn't have the right to mourn.

"I thought I should be just glad to be alive," he says. "But I can't – I still can't accept it. Even something simple, like seeing my wristwatch on top of my drawer." The mornings are the worst, that's why he put his watch away, hidden, he wants to tell Daisy about the mornings. "I know I'll never be complete."

And it's unfair to be whining (and it is _whining_ ) when he has Daisy naked between his arms, but maybe this is the only place in the world he can be honest with himself like this. Maybe the only place where he can have a good cry about it.

"It's never going to stop sucking," she says. Rosalind something similar. But it wasn't Daisy's warm, familiar voice, the bright sympathy she could never hide – that's what _he_ thought of her when they first met. And something else, like a deep understanding. Daisy's life was full of things that will never stop sucking for her. She brushes her fingertips across the top of his arm. "And I'm sorry about that."

He thinks that's it, the reason; he's crying for his lost hand and he's crying because Daisy is sorry about it. He stops, still shaking slightly.

After a couple of minutes – Daisy leaves him some space and gives him some silence to gather himself, kinder than any word she could say – Coulson starts feeling better and it's a shock, to know he can come back.

"I'm sorry about..." he gestures between them, his limp cock resting like an accusation.

It's a common place but he can honestly say this has never happened to him (well, it has happened before, but never when he was with other people). If he's not good at this, if he fails in here... he doesn't know what's left. He thinks about Rosalind, where there was no room for soft things like mistakes and limitations and that was a lot easier.

"That's fine," Daisy says, kissing his temple. The warmth of her bed is not conditional and Coulson is not used to that. "A girl can finish _on her own_."

There's an obvious challenge in her voice and Coulson raises an eyebrow, amused and excited and forgetting that he's such a failure. Daisy sits up and slides back, resting her body against the headboard.

He laughs at the show, yes, he finds himself laughing with his throat still tear-stained and his heart in a knot, at Daisy spreading her legs unceremoniously and offering up an spectacle and then he stops laughing and catches his breath, Daisy's fingers stroking between her legs, and she's watching him intently but Coulson is watching her fingertips. He moves closer to her, wanting to _see better_ , only vaguely noticing he's hard again, as if shame and loss meant nothing in the face of all this beauty. 

He concentrates on Daisy's face instead of her hand drawing slow circles around her clit. Her mouth hangs half open while she teases herself, and then it closes, teeth over her bottom lip, and how can the imagine not make everything inside him stop. It does.

"God, Daisy, you're _gorgeous_."

"You want to help out?" she asks, playful but softly, not pressing.

Coulson nods and crawls between her legs as she slides down the bed again.

He grabs her by the wrist and pushes her fingers into his mouth, sucking at them, licking her skin clean. The muscles in her thighs clench at the sensation and Coulson grins at her reaction. He pushes his tongue inside of her, pressing slowly. In the back of his head he knows he's trying to prove something but he forces himself to forget that and concentrate on how good this feels for both of them, on the open and selfless way she is moaning and twisting her fingers into his hair, her other hand grabbing his fingers and wrapping them around her hip.

"Fuck, Phil, it feels so good," she mutters, and maybe there's a little bit of trying to make him feel better in there but she's breathless, her skin burns against him and her foot digs into his back, clasping him hard against her. He eats her out slowly and with some pride on his technique, listening intently as every raw noise she makes unties the knots inside him further and further, feeling her whole body curl around his tongue.

He lets her come but only after she quietly begs him, his fingers digging into her hip and his mouth teasing her past her orgasm, sucking at the sensitive spot on top of her thigh like he instinctively knows how her body will react, like maybe – maybe – they could fit together after all. 

"Oh – _wow_ – come here," Daisy tells him, chuckling, content.

He follows the flush of her skin as it travels up her chest and throat, until he's face to face with her again, and she's under his weight, arching up to kiss his face blindly, trembling, the kiss a bit awkward for it. She offers up her hands and Coulson takes them, gripping her wrists and pressing them against the pillow, above her head. He likes the way the tension draws out Daisy's powerful muscles, her strong arms; even with his prosthetic Coulson is pretty sure she could untangle herself without powers, but she doesn't.

"I want to be with you," he says, kissing her while she pants, meaning _I want to be inside you_ but not knowing how to ask after the earlier fiasco. For the first time he thinks about the difference in their ages, their bodies and he drops his head to hide his eyes, pressing his lips against her collarbone.

Daisy grabs his arms and pulls him up again, wrapping herself around his waist. Her eyes have gone dark and serious now.

"Please," she says, touching her mouth to his cheek.

"I can't promise I won't cry again," Coulson tells her. Yes, a bit of a joke to defuse the situation. But not entirely a joke.

Daisy takes it seriously, of course, gently, lifting her hands to his face. "It's okay," she says, arching her body against him (no, it's not easier or less wonderful the second time) and he pushes into her slowly – for his own sake. Maybe they do fit, after all.

 

+

 

_It's hard to believe her when she says these things._

_You are not heartless._

_You have emotions._

_Maybe you are good._

_Tenderness is tougher to swallow than convenience, than lies._

_But you believe her (it's Daisy, you always believe her)._

_This, right here in her warm bed, is the most human you've ever felt and of course it hurts more than the other thing (he now knows why he believed Rosalind – because the other thing only led him back here, to Daisy)._

_It will come at a cost, you don't doubt it. But you and Daisy have already paid dearly for things you didn't have, for times you didn't touch, for words you never said. Maybe it's time to give the villains and traitors a reason, time to justify the blood spilled._

_Daisy thinks you deserve this._

_It's hard to believe her (but you always do)._

 

+

 

She comes into the bathroom while Coulson is struggling with his tie again. He doesn't mind wearing casual again but he wants it to be a choice, not a symbol that he gave up. He's wearing a suit today again, he's decided. He and Daisy have spent twenty minutes apart since he left her room to change into clean clothes. Now she seeks him out, like it's natural for them to start the day together, once she has freshened up herself from not-enough sleep. Coulson likes the idea. He doesn't like being alone anymore.

Daisy watches him from the door as he goes through the usual battle to get it right.

"Do you want me to help?" she asks.

Coulson nods.

She steps into the bathroom and into his space. For a moment her presence makes no sense in his intimate private corners, in this part of his life, then he remembers last night. He didn't dream it up, then. Good, that's good. He leaves it in her hands, feeling a thrill at the idea of Daisy being the one doing this for him, only this time you wouldn't call it foreplay. It had never occurred to him, back when he lost his hand, to ask her of all people for help with this.

"Thank you," he says, pressing a light kiss against her temple – he swears he's not clingy, she's just very close and at hand. He, mmm, swears.

"I don't mind," Daisy mutters, focused, as her fingers start working over his chest.

Suddenly her eyes cloud as she looks over at what she's doing.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

Daisy doesn't answer right away. She lets the tie fall and slip from between her fingers.

"Phil..."

There's something odd in her voice, something sad.

"What?"

"Truth is... I don't know, I don't know _how_ to do this... knot a tie," she says, a kind of hopeless expression that's incongruent with the smallness of her confession.

Coulson breathes out in relief because he had been bracing himself for something horrible, like she was about to tell him she didn't love him or something, not that she couldn't do ties. 

"That's okay," he tells her. "I can finish."

"I'm sorry I'm not... I know _I'm not_ –"

She looks away, biting the inside of her cheek in frustration.

Coulson knows she's thinking about Rosalind – her clothes, her heels, her decades of experience in shady government agencies, her detachment. He knows and realizes how stupid the both of them have been, both him and Daisy. 

"I've never dated – I mean, _been_ , with anyone who wears ties," she says.

"It's not a pre-requisite to dating me, I can assure you," he jokes, goes lightly on the d-word, but wants her to know he has no reluctance about it.

"I want to know how to," Daisy tells him. 

"Now?"

She smiles shyly. 

Coulson grabs her shoulders and turns her around so she's facing the mirror.

"Let's start with a simple one," she warns him.

"Fine by me, I'm all about simple knots these days," he replies. "A half Windsor shouldn't be too hard."

He presses his lips against the back of her head – she smells so well, how come he never noticed how well she smells – and slips the tie around her neck.

"First you adjust the length like this," he instructs her. "Then this end goes over this."

It's strangely intimate, showing Daisy how to do this, because she wants to help him with his ties. He doesn't even remember when he learned to do this himself, probably not until he left home, but he forgets. Daisy's gaze goes from his hands to the reflection on the mirror, following the instructions with hunger. It takes him a little while, between his now-usual limitations and the distraction of Daisy between his arms, pressed against him, but in the end he manages a decently-looking knot. He grabs Daisy by the shoulders and turns her towards him, checking.

"You think you got that?" he asks her.

"Please. I'm a fast learner," Daisy replies as he undoes the knot again, beckoning to try it on her own.

"And very humble, I see," he comments.

She turns around again, leaning comfortably against Coulson's chest.

With very little hesitation she manages the knot on the first try – she is a fast learner, and Coulson only has to guide her again once, tapping his index on her wrist to show her the direction. She goes slowly and with precision. When she finishes she adjusts the knot around her neck, proudly, turning around a third time to show Coulson, _proudly_.

"My ties looks so much better on you," he says, leaning for a kiss, wrapping the tie around his knuckle and pulling Daisy closer. A shiver goes through his body at the idea of Daisy wearing his clothes, the idea of them _sharing_.

"I will wear it all day and it'll be a scandal," she whispers, her kisses challenging to disagree, to pull back, to be safe and discreet. Coulson tries not to be unkind towards past lovers, but there's a feeling of completeness (ironic choice of word, he knows) here with Daisy that is new.

She pulls away, breaking the kiss and loosening the tie, taking it off. Coulson drops his head, offering himself to Daisy's hands. She slides the piece of clothing around his neck, she turns up his collar and fixes everything in the right place, carefully.

"I know I'm not what you wanted," she tells him when she finishes, her voice still a bit sad, doubtful.

" _Thank God_ ," Coulson says, holding her face in his hands, and rushing to kiss her with morning and desperation. "You're so much better."


End file.
